My Way_ Speeches and Poems - Charles Bernstein

280 CLOSE LISTENING
tainly, discussion of sound as a material and materializing dimension of poetry
also calls into play such developments as sound poetry, performance
poetry, radio plays and radio "space", movie soundtracks, poetry/music
collaborations, and other audioworks. Beyond that, "close listenings" call
for a non-Euclidean (or complex) prosody for the many poems for which
traditional prosody does not apply.
Since the 1950s, the poetry reading has become one of the most important
sites for the dissemination of poetic works in North America, yet
studies of the distinctive features of the poem-in-performance have been
rare (even full-length studies of a poet's work routinely ignore the audiotext),
and readings-no matter how well attended-are never reviewed by
newspapers or magazines (though they are the frequent subject of light,
generally misinformed, "feature" stories on the perennial "revival" of poetry).!
A large archive of audio and video documents, dating back to an
early recording of Tennyson's almost inaudible voice, awaits serious study
and interpretation. The absence of such a history has had the effect of eliding
the significance of the modernist poetry traditions for postwar performance
art. At the same time, the performative dimension of poetry has
significant relation to text-based visual and conceptual art, as well as visual
poetry, which extend the performative (and material) dimension of the literary
text into visual space.
The newly emerging field of performance studies and theory provides
a useful context for this study. By considering examples of "total" performances
in other cultures, performance theorists have reoriented the discussion
of the relation of theater, audience, and text. While much of the
discussion of postmodern performance art has focused on this and related
contexts, there has been considerably less focus on the implications for
poetry performance. Particularly helpful for "close listening" is Erving
1. There are only two collections that I have been able to locate that address the poetry reading,
Poets on Stage, The Some Symposium on Poetry Readings, ed. Alan Ziegler, Larry Zirlin, and Harry
Greenberg (New York, SomelRelease Press, 1978), and The Poetry Reading, A Contemporary Compendium
on Language and Performance, ed. Stephen Vincent and Ellen Zweig (San Francisco, Momo's
Press, 1981). The accounts of poetry readings in these pioneering collections are largely anecdotal.
Also notable are the annual reports for 1981 and 1982 of San Francisco's 80 Langton Street
Residency Program, assembled by Renny Pritikin, Barrett Watten, and Judy Moran, which provided
a number of sustained accounts, by different writers, of a series of talks and readings and
performances at the space. More recently, the Poetics List, an electronic discussion group
archived at the Electronic Poetry Center (http)/wings.buffalo.edulepc), often features accounts
of readings and conferences (including lists of those in attendance at readings and even the occasional
fashion report). In contrast, reflecting standard academic practice, there is no mention of
Wallace Stevens's recorded poetry performance in a recent book on the poet by Anca Rosu, but
there is some irony in this given the book's auspicious title, The Metaphysics of SOllnd in Wallace
Stevens (Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 1995), which only goes to show that metaphysics
tends to displace physics.